


How to Be Lonely

by perpetualjoy (optijoy)



Category: Gyakuten Saiban | Ace Attorney
Genre: Gen, One Shot, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-31
Updated: 2013-07-31
Packaged: 2017-12-21 23:28:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/906219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/optijoy/pseuds/perpetualjoy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maya Fey has come to the realization that everyone she loves will leave eventually, and she has to learn to deal with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Be Lonely

**Author's Note:**

> I don't usually write in second person, so I thought this was a good experiment.

 

**Step 1: Love somebody.**

Loneliness exists without this requisite, but it aches so much more when it can be compared to the sheer, continuous joy of a time when you loved a person.

You loved the idea of your mother--painted in muted watercolors in your memory through Mia's stories. You may have your own memories of your mother, but you're not sure. They may just be dreams.

You loved your aunt as well. Morgan Fey was always so strong, so brave. She wanted to protect the Kurain traditions at all costs, even when the world around them scorned their spirit medium ways. It was only much later that you discovered she did all of this for power, and by then, your love for her was sealed in your heart.

You adored your sister. She could do no wrong. She was powerful, intelligent, brave, and caring. She left the village to become a lawyer even though her spiritual powers were off the charts. You wanted nothing more to be half as awesome as her, but you hid behind your childish love of hamburgers and Steel Samurai because you were afraid you'd never quite match up to your sister. But you loved her.

And then Nick came along, and you loved him, too. First, you loved him as a friend. He did his best even when he was unsure of himself. Sometimes, it was like looking into a mirror. You were unsure of yourself, too. At the beginning, you couldn't channel spirits on demand--you needed to be desperate in order to call someone to you. But now your power is truly fit for the Master of Kurain. And that's because of watching Nick never give up, isn't it?

At some point though, your love for Nick changed. You just wanted to be around him. Sometimes, you just wanted to hold his hand or lean on him. Sometimes you thought he felt the same. He did, after all, run across a burning bridge to save your life.

Other times you weren't sure. He would have probably run across a burning bridge to save any of your friends. 

But you loved him all the same.

You loved them all, really. Edgeworth and his dashing good looks and awkward demeanor. Fransizka and her strength. Gumshoe and his enthusiasm. Even Godot and Iris and their misguided attempts to help Pearly.

You love Pearly more than anyone in the world now. You constantly worry about her, even though she's blossoming into a capable woman. You can't help but worry. You can't help but be proud. She's the light in your life. 

Loving people comes so easily to you. Sometimes you fear it is a weakness, and that you should shut yourself off from the world entirely in order to shield your glass heart from being broken. But this, you know, would be as impossible as forgetting how to breathe.

* * *

 

**Step 2: Lose the people you love.**

Mia had been the worst of your losses. One moment, she was promising you hamburgers in exchange for squirreling away evidence in a bizarre miniature of the Thinker, and in the next moment, you were kneeling over her dead body crying her name over and over again. You don't remember much about that night. You don't remember getting whisked away to the detention center or even meeting Nick for the first time. You just remember your sister lying on the floor, her life leaking out of her with no way to stop it.

Losing your aunt was a bit easier because you never really knew her. You cared about her and believed she cared about you as well. But she didn't. Still, you worried more about Pearly than yourself. You only cried for your aunt once.

Losing your mother was perhaps the easiest of them all. She was just an idea. After the initial shock of learning that Elise Deauxnim was Misty Fey, you realized you had lost your mother long ago. 

You'd kept in contact with Miles Edgeworth and Dick Gumshoe for a bit. Kept up e-mail correspondence with Godot and Iris. Even Fransizka would deign to send you brief text messages whenever she was back in L.A. demanding your time but expecting you to know that it was she who was bending over backwards to accommodate you.

Eventually, though, everyone became busy, and the e-mails and text messages stopped. You had no idea at the time of Mia's death that losing people would become a trend. 

* * *

 

**Step 3: Expect everyone to leave you, eventually. But always wear a smile to hide your pain.**

You should have been surprised when Nick stopped e-mailing. What had been a month's worst of three-or-four time daily e-mails trickled to a halt. He stopped updating you on his life probably around the time he was disbarred.

He never mentioned being disbarred and neither did you, out of politeness. You wanted to tell him that it didn't matter to you, that you believed in him, that there was no way he would ever present false evidence in court. But you never did. Many were the nights that you sat with your fingers hovering over the keyboard, trying to compose the right (hah!) words to offer him comfort.

You wanted to tell him you loved him, too.

You never could find the right words for either purpose, so you wrote about the Steel Samurai and hamburgers. Hiding behind the childish facade again.

You weren't surprised, though, that Nick stopped writing you. This is how it happens. 

You lose everyone, eventually.

Even Pearly, you think, will leave Kurain. Even though her first exposure to the outside world had been when you were on trial for yet another murder you didn't commit, she has grown interested in it. And you want her to study abroad outside of Kurain. She will eventually be the master one day, if she wants it. 

But she will leave.

And the only way to deal with the inevitable is the way you deal with everything--hide your pain behind a smile.

* * *

 

**Step 4: Allow hope to render your good sense useless.**

Pearly stops by to talk to you as you stuf another envelope with the newest Steel Samurai sequel series addressed to the Wright Anything Agency. Nick has a daughter now. Maybe she enjoys the Steel Samurai… this is the same excuse you tell yourself every day.

"Why do you still send him DVDs?" Pearly asks.

You seal the envelope while you answer. "He watches them."

"Really?"

"Of course." Of course he does, you think to yourself. Well, someone does.

"But he never answers."

"He always receives them." In the years you've been sending him mail, you've never received a "Return to Sender." Not once. And this is the bit of hope you cling to.

Pearly frowns at you now, biting her thumb nail. A bit of the six year-old she used to be shines through, and you stand up to hug her. You can't stand a world where she worries about you.

"Nick just needs to know we still care about him, even if he never answers." This, too, is an assurance you may need more than Pearly does.

She seems satisfies, and she leaves. 

But you know that sending Nick copies of a children's show that you yourself only follow out of nostalgia isn't good sense at all. But you don't care, because somewhere inside of you, an irrational part claims that this, really, is the best thing to do.

And you love him.

So you continue even though you fully expect never to hear from him again.

* * *

 

**Step 5: Sometimes your expectations are shattered.**

You open the thin envelope as carefully as you can even though your hands are shaking.

You remove a single piece of paper with nothing more than one line scrawled in familiar handwriting. Handwriting you'd recognize anywhere, at any time, even though it's been years since you've seen it first hand.

Leave it to him to use the regular post rather than an e-mail to convey his thoughts.

The paper only read:

Dear Maya, I'm so sorry. Please forgive me.

Your tears dampen the edges of the letter.

 


End file.
